Regular courses to rule vocational college
The College of Vocational Studies (CVS) may have to rethink its name soon. With the new four-year-programme, the college will do away with its vocational courses, Mallica Joshi reports.
The College of Vocational Studies (CVS) may have to rethink its name soon. With the new four-year-programme, the college will do away with its vocational courses.
According to teachers at CVS, the seven vocational courses are being turned into minor subjects or discipline-II subjects. A student will no longer be able to get a degree in tourism or human resource management.
The college will only be able to run discipline-I courses or majors in four subjects - History, Economics, Computer Science and Business Economics. The vocational courses will now be offered as minor courses, which will have six papers as opposed to 20 for the discipline-I.
The move has angered the teachers. “There are 25 universities in the country, who are running tourism courses. We have had 100% placement for our courses. On the one hand the university is talking about making students more employable, and on the other they are doing away with the courses that actually offer employment to students,” said K Ashutosh, who teaches tourism in CVS.
The university officials, however, say that they have left the decision to the colleges.
“The decision to make a course discipline I or II depends on the college and the faculty. We have maintained that we cannot increase the sanctioned strength. If a course, has only one teacher, how will she/he teach 30 courses? A teacher has to make 20 papers under discipline-I, six under discipline-II and four under applied courses. One teacher cannot teach all these things,” said Umesh Rai, director South Campus.
The teachers, however, say that the courses have been running with one teacher till now as they are interdisciplinary and can do so as an honours course as well.
“The course in tourism has elements of history, accounts and economics. Other courses such as Management and Marketing of Insurance, Small and Medium Enterprises and Materials Management were being run by the commerce faculty. They can still be run like that,” a teacher added.